Re: Why does autoconf depend on autoconf2.13?

[Phil Edwards <phil@jaj.com>]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 10:45:16AM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Phil Edwards <phil@jaj.com> writes:
> 
> > Looking over the 'dpkg -L' output, it appears that all the files needed by
> > autoconf (now at 2.53) are provided in that package.  It doesn't appear --
> > AFAICT -- to use anything from autoconf2.13.
> > 
> > So I tried to purge autoconf2.13 but dpkg bitched at me.  I'm curious why.
> 
> I'm making autoconf depend on autoconf2.13 until we make a
> release.  People bitch at me about this on a regular basis, but
> their old autoconf scripts still work because the wrapper script
> will fall back to 2.13.

Ah, okay.  That makes sense.


> When we release the next Debian, I'll remove the dependency.
> Then people will bitch at me because their old scripts will no
> longer work because they forgot to install autoconf 2.13.
> 
> Trust me, there is no way to win here.

Oh, I'm not really complaining.  (It's kind of odd with the dependancy
and the diversions, but the reasoning is sound.)  I wasn't even aware of
autoconf-wrapper (that's a Debianism, right?), until I noticed that it
seemed to be the only thing present in 2.13 and not present in 2.5x.

Now I need to go bitch at the auto*make* packager, because there's a new
(1.4p5) upstream version that hasn't been uploaded in something like 2.odd
months, and no responses to people's bugs in the logs.  :-)


Thanks!
Phil

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